Archive for the Boots Category

Sorry for the gap in posting; I was doing really important stuff. While I was gone, my old nemesis Joe the Plumber gave a nonsensical speech to a group of teabaggers, the nation engaged in a vigorous (sort of) debate about sex-positive feminism, and I got bronchitis or something.

Say, if you’d like to see more updates in this spaces, why not e-mail me and tell me about your recent exploits? I am currently seeking CTGML stories that feature (1) makeup sex between couples, and (2) guys as the protagonist, especially gay guys (but straight guys too). But raunchy stories from straight women, like the subject of today’s story, are always appreciated.

Blonde vixen “Debby” is a political blogger who lives in Tallahassee, Florida. Every so often she visits her grandfather “John” and his wife, who live in Tahoe — she’s an expert skier. One weekend this winter, she went up there for a short ski vacation. On one of her first nights in town, she and John went out to a restaurant that featured lots of unusual game, like buffalo, antelope, and elk. She was still wearing ski clothes from her day outside, but likes to go for a look more glamorous than the natural/sporty vibe most ladies project there (or so she claims — I don’t know anything about the topic; I am frightened of skiing, and don’t have any relations that do any leisure activities more glamorous than copy-editing), so she was wearing black Under Armour leggings and a tight black ski jacket by Salomon, with heavy black eyeliner.

Salomon jacket

Kohl eyeliner

As she and her grandpa were ordering a bottle of wine, she noticed their “hot young server.” He had “classic male” good looks, and he looked admiringly back at her. Debby ordered the antelope. She asked for medium rare; grandpa made the interaction weird by saying “She’s a meat eater, she likes blood on her plate!” But when the antelope showed up, it was dry and overdone, and she had to send it back.

The replacement piece of antelope, when Seth the waiter brought it, was “fabulous.” This time he and them ended up getting into a conversation. He revealed that he’s from the same state the she is, and that he was in the process of applying to law school, and that he was a skier rather than a snowboarder. Debby’s grandfather approved of these facts. (He is prejudiced against snowboarders, on the ground that they tear up the snow too much, or something.) He seemed impressed by the guy and, noticing the sparks flying between him and Debby, “conveys that he thinks I should get on it.”

He helped out with this by supplying a pretext, saying something along the lines of “my granddaughter has this blog, she’s doing a story on snowboard clothing.” She wasn’t doing any such thing. I didn’t understand why he brought snowboarding into it when all three of them were skiers, and according to Debby, “it didn’t really make any sense.” She can’t remember how on earth he introduced this topic in the first place. Anyhow, he suggested they meet up so she could interview Seth. “Are you available tomorrow?”, he asked. Meanwhile, she and Seth were looking each other in they eyes, and he looked, in her words, like he “can’t believe this is being handed to him.” She was pretty pleased about it, too. (It sounds like kind of unusual behavior on John’s part, but again, what do I know? Both my grandfathers drank themselves to death before I was born.)

Seth said “No, I’m not available.” and John asked “What about tonight?”, and handed him her name and number on a piece of paper. When they walked out of the restaurant shortly afterwards, news of the little romance was already being bruited about among the staff. The bartender called out “hey, don’t forget to call Ben!” Debby was in a relaxed mood, having “been drinking all day with cougars” that she’d met on the slopes, and she was “laughing her ass off” about the situation.

She called Seth a couple of hours later, saying she would be at this bar the Dusty Boot later that evening, and did he want to meet for a drink. He did. He texted her a while later, saying “I’m at the Dusty Boot.” She had changed into dark gray BDG jeans from Urban Outfitters, white cowboy boots, a loose black tank top, and a cardigan also from Urban Outfitters.

BDG jeans

Urban Outfitters cardigan

White cowboy boot

A bunch of her new Tahoe friends were at the bar, and had a good time. She and Seth drank tequila with lime and talked about “kayaks” and “ice climbing.” He told her about how he got fed on the job by eating people’s sendbacks, and explained his policy as “I would eat anybody’s food I would make out with.” “So you ate that burned-up piece of antelope?” He said no, he didn’t eat the burned antelope. (What a ridiculous sentence to have to type.)

“So you wouldn’t eat my antelope?”

“No, I would.”

Having gotten that out of the way, they kept talking for a while; he said “do you wanna go make out in the bathroom?”, and she said “no, I wanna go play in the snow.” They went to her car and got a flask of tequila. They ran around until they found a “snow-enclosed gondola,” got inside and started “making out furiously.” “Before I knew it, my pants were down, and I was like ‘What am I doing, no.'” That sounds uncomfortable, but also, she revealed to me at this point that when she stays with the old folks, she has a 12 p.m. curfew. What the heck? So they both started walking back to her condo entrance.

Instead of separating, though, they went into the locker rooms that the building has for people to store their ski equipment, where they again started “makin’ out like crazy.” Debby didn’t feel she could afford to get into trouble, so she came up with a plan. She said “I have to leave and come back.” Seth said “I’ll wait for you.” She went upstairs, found her grandpa, and said “okay, I came back, I’m gonna go back out,” all petulant-like. John was amenable to this, only saying “don’t stay out too long.”

She went back down to the locker room and found Seth, and they resumed “makin’ out all hard.” Finally, the clothes came off, and “we did it up against a locker. It was really hot.” One might think this would be difficult, especially since she’s short, but she claimed they did not suffer from any logistical difficulties. Then they said goodbye, she went upstairs to bed, and she hasn’t seen him again.

EDITED TO ADD that I share your confusion about this story, readers. Debby is in her 20s and doesn’t need a curfew. On the other hand, when I visit my parents, I can’t even go to CVS without briefing them on where I’m going, how long I’ll be gone, and how I won’t wreck the car on the way home. That is what family members are like. On the other hand, if her grandfather is of a protective bent, why pimp out her and her juicy antelope to a virile young man? Debby’s grandfather sounds like a weirdo.

“Anita” is in her early 20s and works as a vintage clothing seller. (She requested this pseudonym; it’s kind of weird for me because my mom is named Anita, but I was like “okay.”) I talked to her the other night, and she told me about a fateful series of events that took place about six months ago — on what I would call a “memorable night,” except that, as with many of the people I talk to, she only remembers about half of it.

Anita was single at the time, although casually dating several guys. (She’s very petite and small in stature! Does this ever happen to taller women?) Her ex-boyfriend had a friend that she was trying to be buddies with; she saw him around a lot or whatever, and she had suggested that they should hang out some time. She wasn’t trying to have it off with him, though; she just thought he was a fun guy.

The first time she suggested getting together, he didn’t have time. Then a few nights later, he was having people over to his apartment, and he called her to say “come over, let’s hang out.” She showed up wearing cowboy boots, skinny Levi’s jeans, and an 80s concert t-shirt.

Cowboy boots

She wouldn’t tell me what the 80’s concert was, apparently on the grounds that it would be too identifying (?). However, RANT OF THE DAY: Can people please shut the hell up about “80’s music”? When anyone uses this phrase, as far as I can tell, they seem to be talking about a particular style of glossy synthesizer pop music that was popular in that decade. Like, Wham! and Frankie Goes to Hollywood and Spandau Ballet and whatever the fuck. WARNING, CHALLENGING OPINION ALERT, that style of music totally sucks. It’s crappy and overproduced, plus the drums sound too “wet.” Time spent talking about “80’s music” is wasted time that could have been employed discussing an actual good band! Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds put out like ten records in the 80’s,so if you’re going to fetishize a decade, why don’t you talk about them? Talk about Tom Waits or something. Also, I hate the saxophone solo in “Careless Whispers.” Seriously, “80’s music” needs to suck my balls. Here are some concert t-shirts from the nineteen-eighties that I would condone wearing.

Flipper still rules

Butthole Surfers

Anita’s new friend “Gibby” had a bunch of his dudes over, watching episodes of The Office (American version). She brought over a “huge bottle of Gentleman Jack” and proceeded to drink it straight up. Gibby was drinking the whiskey too, I think. Time passed. At one point, Gibby went into the kitchen to get another drink, and she went with him. She kissed him and they started making out. She hadn’t ever been interested in him before, and attributes what happened to beer goggles (“Gentleman Jack spectacles”?).

They went back out into the living room and acted normal around Gibby’s friends, as one does. Then eventually, he decided to go to bed, and told her, “come in there when you’re ready.” So that’s what she did — she went into his bedroom, and they had sex. She says “it was a success.”

It is unclear what all the other dudes were doing while this was going on; maybe they had gone home. This part of the story is kind of weird. And what makes it even odder is, Anita revealed that it was still only 10 p.m. when they got done having sex! I was confused by this at first, because I couldn’t understand why Gibby went to bed so early. Now I think I know the reason, though. I think that “going to bed” was just a ploy he used to get laid. I know, right? Can you imagine? What kind of man would do such a thing? Shocking, but in any case, Anita had no urge to sleep over there. “I was just done, and then I left.”

She went home and changed clothes, into a floral sundress, with the same boots and no underwear.

Floral sundress

Forever 21 dress

She phoned up some good friends and they told her they were at a popular local billiard hall, “Tight Pocket Billiards.” She drove over, joined them, and started drinking again. It was there that she met “Charlie,” a friend of her friends who was partying with them. When she first spotted him, she mistook him for someone she had met before, so she was like “hey, you’re Kurt.” He was like “no,” but they struck up a conversation.

Shortly thereafter, she “asked him to take me home.” It struck me that this story was missing the part where the two folks go from shaking hands to going home to fuck. “What did you talk about?”, I asked. She said they didn’t talk much, and that it was basically a matter of “chemistry” between them. Furthermore, “when you have sex, you want more.”

And so it came to pass that they went to his apartment and had the “best sex ever.” Chemistry doesn’t lie! A surprising fact about this interview is that Charlie was there while I was conducting it (we were at a fashion party). He had been talking to someone else, but wandered over at this point. Anita kept emphasizing that it was “seriously, the best sex ever.” Charlie seemed more pleased than otherwise to be associated with an activity like this. He says that when they met, he was wearing a black Nirvana t-shirt, probably with jeans and Pumas.

Vintage shirt

Charlie didn’t call her back for two weeks after that, but she says they are now “best friends” who also have great sex. Looking at my archives, this has happened before, that someone had better luck when they went out for the second time in one night. I mentioned it to Georgiana, and she thinks it is because of, quote, “pheromones.” You leave the house all smeared with your own sex pheromones, and you attract someone whose body chemicals and hormones are all matched up with yours. Right?

Holy Grails: We know so little about them. As regular readers will recall, we know that an HG is an article of clothing that consistently garners special, sexy attention for its wearer when she or he appears in public. We know that many people possess such items (although, Lord knows, not all of us), and we know that these auspicious garments have helped to get their wearers laid on multiple occasions. But where do Holy Grails come from? How do they work, and why do they work? Are the properties of the HG intrinsic to the object itself, or do they result from an increased sense of confidence on the part of the subject? A cynical person would probably claim that they’re like those “lucky socks” or whatever that athletes wear, and only work because they make you feel special; but literally no one really knows the answers to these question.

Look, people, here’s the truth: My methodology isn’t really very scientific. This clothes thing is a new field of endeavor, like biology was in the nineteenth century, and if I were a Victorian naturalist, I would get the information I needed by going into the field and recording thousands of specimens. I haven’t been doing that, because I don’t have the resources. I’m not a Charles Darwin or an Alfred Wallace, and I can’t be travelling to Peru or whatever, notebook in hand, hunting down obscure varietals of ass-flattering trousers. Instead I rely on people sending me e-mails that might provide key evidence.

It is lucky, then, that just when I was wondering about Holy Grails, I got this e-mail from “Agatha,” who wrote me on Christmas Eve. She prefaces her remarks by explaining that “I’m a little hung over… I’m about to endure my very large family for entirely too long and it’s still too early to start drinking again.”

Agatha is in her 20’s and lives in a small town (“Possum Flats”) in Delaware. She says that “I have these cowboy boots that were given to me by my now ex-fiancé.” He gave them as a birthday present because she “had been thinking about buying a pair, but my work situation was ridiculous and I couldn’t find the time to shoe shop.” She has since left the job, which “was sucking my soul dry,” and the man, who “turned out to be a giant ass.” But the boots remain. “It’s starting to occur to me that they are my holy grail. Any time I wear them out, it’s pretty much guaranteed that some man will look down, comment on them and then get this wistful far-off look for a moment. I couldn’t figure out the look until last week.”

Vintage Frye boots

On the night she’s referring to, Agatha went to a bar in Possum Flats to exchange Christmas gifts with a friend. She went out “wearing the first clean clothes I came by, a beige and brown striped thermal shirt from the Gap (big beige stripes, little brown stripes and it buttons a little), a pair of dark brown cords I’ve had for so long I don’t know where I bought them (these pants are great because my ass looks great in them, but they’re still really comfortable!), and of course, the boots.”

Gap brown cords

“It was a really weird night.” The two friends had met up with “really no interest in talking to anyone else, and it’s not my style to pick people up at bars. We ended up staying way longer than I thought we would. We somehow ended up talking to these three guys at the other side of the bar. The bartender called last call around 12:30, at which point, one of the guys asked what our plans were for the rest of the evening. {Editor’s note: I hate it when bars close this early! We’d never put up with that in my town!}”

They “conferred with each other and decided we could still drink and not be scumbags the next day at work. Leaving with the new guy friends, I hung back a little with the one I’d been flirting with (kinda looks like the guy from the Verizon commercials, but in a cute way) and in the hallway of the bar, we start making out. Big lower lip. Yummy. Out on the sidewalk, all of us freezing, we’re trying to decide where to go. Their place was around the corner, so we walk the three blocks or so laughing drunkenly.”

Verizon man

The scene at “this random house” was as follows: “We’re all sitting around drinking beer and eating cookies. The computer was on playing music from some sort of internet radio thing. I forget what the song was… it was Neil Young. Horizon Moon?? Blue Horizon?? something like that, when all three guys jump up off the couch and take their pants off. They just started dancing around in their boxers. Said something about whenever that song came on, you dance in your undies. We didn’t buy it. There was a cat walking around the apartment that at one point started sucking on my arm. That was weird… there was dancing involved too. Fully dressed though.”

After this night of cat-sucking and erotic dance, who wouldn’t be in the mood for love? Agatha was, it seemed, because “I kinda made the first move. Again… it was weird. I felt like someone else! Me and this guy were sitting on the couch and everyone else was outside smoking. I stood up, grabbed his hand and walked him down the hallway to his room. Pretty clear intentions.”

She adds that she and “‘can you hear me now?’ guy” have been texting, and might see each other again. But the part of the story that’s most important for science is that while they were hooking up, “he asked if I would leave the boots on. (My ah-ha moment with the boots! That’s the look!! Why it took me this long to figure out, is completely beyond me.)” So that’s that. Holy Grails work because they make people picture you fucking them while still wearing them! I like this theory; it could be true, and it has a certain elegant simplicity.

EPILOGUE: “Me and the friend from the bar having been trying to figure out this boot stuff since. She was talking to one of her bosses about the whole thing the next day (Wow, you look really tired… good night?? haha!!… apparently we were out late enough to be scumbags at work the next day). I have never met her boss. I don’t know his name, never seen him, couldn’t point him out if I had to… My friend, saying something about the boots, laughed when her boss got a far-off wistful look and asked what color they were!”

Welcome to the first “Goth Edition” of CTGML! Loyal reader “Lydia” wondered whether I was interested in her goth stories, and my answer was: of course! In fact, I think it would be fun to do a series of these, focusing on different musical subgenres and the styles that are associated with them: prog, krautrock, Americana, freak-folk, yacht rock, and so on. We could learn about different cultures together. You know what genre I bet has the worst clothes? Hick-hop, that’s what.

Lydia is in her late 30’s and lives in a part of New York that’s not NYC. Two months before this story starts, she had been dumped by her boyfriend of six months. She explains that “he was the first boyfriend subsequent to my divorce, and the dumping was an unpleasant surprise. I hadn’t had any action since then; I wasn’t totally ready to jump into a new relationship, but I was open to possibilities.”

Such was her from of mind when she went out one night to dance with friends at “Release the Bats” (“local, tiny and pathetic, now defunct Goth night”; not its actual name). She was wearing a black leather biker jacket with one-inch band buttons pinned to it, “20-eye Docs and fishnets and the little Tripp skirt with purple plaid trim and a black cami,” and was “eyelinered all to hell and gone.”

Black silk camisole

Black and purple miniskirt

Tall Doc Martins

Why can’t I find a biker jacket online that looks as good as the one Kate Moss is wearing in this photo? All the designer-y ones are too weird and don’t resemble the classic style enough. Anyhow, here is an affordable option.

Black leather motorcycle jacket

Lydia got to the club shortly after doors opened, talked to a few friends, had a couple of drinks, and danced with her friend “Lenora” to songs like “Bizarre Love Triangle.” There were a couple of cute guys there, one of whom caught her eye because he looked at first glance like her friend “DJ Knobgoblin” (not his actual DJ pseudonym). On closer inspection, he turned out to be a guy she’d never met.

She ended up talking to him later, though: Tthe song “Barracuda” came on and Lydia commented “that that was KARAOKE, not dance music. Because it’s such an old song, I guess that was what started the ‘no, how old are you?’ conversation this time.” The DJ Knobgoblin lookalike was hanging around near her and Lenora, and somehow ended up joining in this discussion. As she describes him, he had hair in “the classic Robert Smith mode. Eyeliner. Long black coat with a laced back. Black t-shirt. Vinyl Tripp pants that laced up the sides, rawr. And New Rocks.”

Vinyl pants, not the same ones though

Lancôme eyeliner

His name was “Edgar.” She was 36 at the time, but “he guessed me at 22, not my vanity prompting, but more grown out of the music discussion… of course he turned the question around on me, and, honestly, with all the eyeliner, he could have been any age, so I said ’27’ which is usually safe.” He was 35, and “said he was flattered.”

As you might expect, “we started chatting. He offered to buy me a drink, and I accepted, although perhaps I shouldn’t have, as that made it my third, and I’m a lightweight.” Aww. “But we were having a good conversation, and I was having a great time. He admitted, as if it were slightly embarrassing, that he was one of those goths with a real job — a vet. Ooh, gainfully employed! When I admitted to a real job, too, he asked what I did, and when he heard baker, he said ‘Marry me!'” She adds that “my job gets that response a LOT.”

Flirting between these two was getting more intense as they found out how much they had in common. They talked about geeky, Star Wars-y stuff, and he revealed that he was divorced, too. “Neither of us does drugs any more” — or so he claimed! — “although the drugs he doesn’t do any more are not the same ones that I don’t do any more.”

She also noted that “he dances WELL. Not just the punch-the-hobbit-dropkick-the-hobbit industrial-boy style, either. Old school gothiness. But understands how to shift from the usual goth ‘no I am not looking at anyone else dance just see me not look *peek*’ to dancing WITH someone.” I feel like I’m in a new world, of aesthetic standards that I didn’t even know existed. This multiculturalism thing is working!

“I forget what we were talking about when he asked if he could kiss me. I do remember thinking ‘you actually need to ask?’ but I said yes, and, mmm. So nice to get the attention. The universe listened and sent me the boy in eyeliner I wanted!”

When it was time go, Lydia wasn’t sober enough to drive yet. They decided they could go for coffee in his car, and he could drive her back to hers later, so they went to a local diner. “I had hot chocolate with whipped cream, because I was pretty sure coffee would make me jittery, and he had cheese fries (although I tried to warn him it’d be nacho goo on them) and a Coke.” A baker and a veterinarian, having cheese fries and cocoa at a diner? I didn’t know that was part of the Goth lifestyle, because they never write songs about that. Nobody writes songs that adorable. Even goddamn Beat Happening would have been like “we can’t do this song, it isn’t edgy enough.”

“I said ‘let me see if I can do this without getting whipped cream on my nose,’ which meant treating it kind of like an ice cream cone, to which he said ‘now you’re just teasing me.’ My response was ‘and it’s not even a cherry stem!’ He admitted to cheating, in earlier times, by hiding a pre-tied cherry stem in his mouth.”” I guess this part’s kind of edgy. “As we were driving back to the club to get my car, I asked if he was driving back home then, or following me, or what? He said ‘are you inviting me?’ I said, ‘I’m inviting you.’ He was pleased.”

“There are few things more fraught with silly than two laced-up goths getting undressed for bed, let me tell you.” After dealing with her boots, she took off her last few things in the bathroom, grabbed a condom, and emerged wearing a paisley satin robe. He was still wearing his vinyl pants and socks. “I cuddled up next to him, and the smooches began in earnest. He had his hand tangled into my hair, pretty strongly. Melt!”

“Wasn’t long before he discovered the nekkid under the bathrobe, and commented on it. My response was ‘and you’re overdressed.'” The rest of the clothes came off. Lydia says that Edgar “had skills” and that his tongue piercing “rocked [her] world.” “When I went for the condom, though, he said no”; He gave her some whole explanation about how he really liked her, and would want to take her on a date before having sex. “More cuddling and kissing, and eventually sleep.”

He left in the morning with a terrible hangover, and promised to call if he wasn’t dead. “I played happy music while I was at work — for my values of happy: the Cure’s “Head on the Door,” Elvis Costello’s “My Aim is True,” the Horrorpops, the Raveonettes.” Hmmm, I suppose that’s pretty happy. Like, if you ranked all the music in the world according to how cheerful it was, and you gave a ten to “Yummy, Yummy, Yummy” by The Ohio Express, and a zero to “Raping a Slave” by Swans, then Elvis Costello or the Raveonettes would probably get about a six. (One of today’s elecronic DJ “mashup” artists should consider doing a mashup of “Yummy, Yummy, Yummy” and “Raping a Slave”; it would probably get a lot of attention.)

In the next couple of days, she exchanged a few texts with him, and ended up hanging out at his place soon after. “We didn’t exactly DATE, although we hung out and fooled around a couple more times in the next month. ” It all came to and end when he stood her up for a party she’d asked him to, and gave a suspicious-sounding excuse. She started asking around about him, “at which point I had the glorious experience of four people telling me separately, ‘Oh, HIM? He’s an asshole,’ and going into detail about the coke habit and some of his past exploits.” He wasn’t even a vet, just a vet tech!

If you’re a less copious drinker than most of my readers, you might find this helpful: “For a while, I had a really good line for declining a third drink. Oh, no, two’s my limit. Know what I did the last time I had three drinks?’ (pause) ‘Edgar.'”

**** Thanks to Emel for coming up with the name “DJ Knobgoblin.” If any real DJs out there want to use this, it’s all yours.

A few weeks ago (During the election! It seems so long ago — like a dream, almost) I tried to stir up trouble with an insulting post about Joe the Plumber. My remarks about this important American political figure concerned his bad clothes, his irrational hatred of a three percent tax hike, and what I perceived as his desperate need for some pussy. I hoped people (starting with Joe himself) would get mad, and the political blogosphere would start buzzing about my website.

Possibly JtP is less of an egomaniac than I thought, because that never happened. But yesterday I managed to start a controversy anyway! A classy lady at Salon.com argues that my blog is “stupid” and “annoying” because it promotes materialism. Do I have an ongoing beef with Salon now? Are second-wave feminists even more thin-skinned and irritable than Joe Wurzelbacher? You be the judge, as I share some of the wit and wisdom of “Judy Berman,” along with my own rebuttals.

— There’s just something pathetic about the idea that sex appeal is something you can go out and purchase, whether the cash you’re shelling out is for breast implants or a $372 pair of riding boots.

Most of the stuff I post about isn’t expensive. That’s because so many of the people who submit stories to me are total cheapskates who only get clothes when a friend gives something away, or their old roommate leaves it at their place by mistake. I did a poll on this back in September, and almost 75 percent of my readers reported they were shopping at cheap places, or not at all. However, most of what this “Berman” has to say is really about my the post “This Is a Public Service Announcement — With Vaginas!” that I linked to above. Therefore, I suspect this modern-day Carl Bernstein did not read very many of my posts.

More importantly, people who are self-righteous about how little they spend on clothes have got to go. Saving up to buy something lovely and durable will build character.

Also, it’s helpful to me to hunt for products online and then post pictures of them, because it is a sort of “virtual shopping,” and staunches some of my raging desire to buy new items. It’s less like “retail porn,” more like retail methadone.

Never mind that a recession seems like a particularly inappropriate moment to push the idea that consumerism leads to fulfillment.

Well, in all fairness, I started this website in July, and unlike the far-seeing humanists who were running the country at the time, I did not predict that the stock market was going to crash. When that happened, I was like “LOL, now I’ll never get a book deal.”

At the heart of what bugs me about the Clothes That Got Me Laid is the lip service it pays to third-wave feminism.

I tried to come up with a clever zinger about this; I was going to be like “I paid lip service to your MOM last night!” Then I said to myself, “no, that doesn’t really work.” But I showed the article to my colleague in the English department, and she said “I think this woman is engaged in a strong misreading.” That’s like the harshest snap of all time, so I felt better.

Could someone remind me again what those three things have to do with decking yourself out in other people’s outfits because you don’t have the confidence to snag a bed buddy all by your cute, smart, witty self?

I encourage my readers to come up with their own fun, interesting outfits, just like the folks who write in to me have done. Judging from the e-mails I get, my readers are creative people, and they’re also talented writers.

***** Extra bonus misconception:***** Dudes who are like “men don’t care what you wear, they just want to see you naked.”

I know that’s not true, and here’s how. I have a referral log thingy that tells me what search terms people use to find this website. The most popular search terms that show up are variations on “knee socks sex” and “fucking in thigh boots story.” People are also looking for pics of women in wet dresses, underwear, and t-shirts. If men did not notice, care about or register clothes, they would not want women to be embellished in any way. If all these would-be masturbators cared about was seeing naked women, they could simply perform an internet search on “porn”; something would probably come up.

I’ll close with a video for my favorite song of the moment. It’s Darryl Hall and John Oates in 1976. They were some of the best-looking guys and best singers around, so they had no reason to doubt their cute, smart, witty selves. Hall, in particular, never seemed to lack confidence (seriously, have you ever read an interview with that dude? So cocky). He could have worn any old thing to this concert, but instead, he has availed himself of the classic hot-girl combination of knee boots over skinny jeans. It looks great! Do you think he got laid that night?

A few months ago, I got interviewed by a journalist for the local paper about this website, and she asked me WTF I was talking about when I said it’s a third-wave feminist blog. I answered her question as best I could at the time, but today I was reminded of why I felt so strongly about it in the first place. I happened to read this article on Salon.com, and it’s totally an example what today’s sex-positive fashion blogger is up against.

It’s called “Your ‘Orgasm Face’?: Cosmo and the Pornification of Women.” Basically, a certain “Amy Tuteur” rails against today’s modern culture of “increasing sexual openness,” on the grounds that it is a “bonanza for men” but not any fun for women. I have not had a chance to look at the Cosmopolitan article to which this piece refers; my extensive schedule of reading, writing letters, hunting for old curios, and vigorous Socratic debate sometimes precludes my reading influential Cosmo pieces in as timely a fashion as I would like. Nevertheless, I take strong exception to this argument (Tuteur’s, not the orgasm-face one), and would like to register my disagreement in as firm an manner as possible. For example, there’s this:

Men get all the benefits; women carry all the risks. Men get laid, get action, get lucky and women get pregnant, get sexually transmitted diseases, get infertile, get cervical cancer.

Where to begin, in this farrago of unwarranted assumptions and logical fallacies? Setting aside the question of what sort of freaky sex act makes you pregnant and infertile, at the same time, — the whole premise of today’s dissolute culture is that women, not just men, enjoy having sex. When a dude and a woman have sex, both of them are getting laid, not just one. Both of them could write in to my website and tell me about it, especially if they were wearing cute outfits. Does this “Amy Tuteur” believe that women have been pretending this entire time (since the 60s and 70s — even earlier in the case of your mom {because she’s old, and a slut}) that they like getting fucked; whereas really, it is a ruse to appease the patriarchy? Alternately, perhaps they think they like fucking, but really don’t. Well, that’s kind of condescending, Amy Tuteur. (This woman, incidentally, is a gynecologist. I would hate to have a gynecologist that judgmental; my gyno is a fun lady, who once told me about how she treated her undereye bags using prescription hemorrhoid cream.)

The most puzzling bit is the following:

{Pornography is bad, etc. etc.}, and all in exchange for what? Young men are almost always sexually satisfied by their relationships. Young women? Not so much … because young men are often inexperienced lovers more concerned about their own enjoyment than anything else.”

Well jeez, how are they ever going to get any better? The whole point of young dudes is that they fuck a lot of women, and eventually they get good at it. That is what they are here for. If everybody refused to fuck them (for fear of being “pornified”), they would never learn how to please a woman. (Sorry to be so heteronormative, but Tuteur doesn’t have anything to say about queer people and their problems.) In the aggregate, if lots of people go out and have casual sex, progress is made. That’s why if you fuck a young guy — even if it ends up not being that great — you are making a contribution.

Look, America. If we want to solve the terrible problem of inexperienced, inept young men, we’ve all got to work together. Teaching young people the skills and techniques they need to succeed in the twenty-first century is a goal that involves all of us — that needs the contributions of people like you, but is also so much bigger than any one individual. But it won’t always be easy. (Unlike your mom.) Sometimes the task will be intensely humiliating, painful, or even bloody. There will be times when you are too numbed up on coke to feel anything, or too drunk to remember your partner’s name. You must persevere, Americans. In the end, you will be proud of yourself, because you were on the right side of history. A story I heard recently proves this to be true.

This takes place about two years ago, when “Naomi” was a model living in New York. One night she was drunk at a rooftop party on the Lower East Side; apparently the building had a great view, because my notes say “downtown, lights, awesome.” She was wearing black cutoff shorts, made from a pair of old jeans that had shrunk in the wash, and a pair of flat leather boots that used to belong to an old roommate. She had stolen dozens of this woman’s items over time, by borrowing them and not returning them, which was fair because all of them “looked better” on her.

Black denim cutoff shorts

Loeffler Randall boot

The boots that follow are only tangentially relevant, but it’s boot season! Everyone wants suggestions on hot new boots! Also, I spent a lot of time researching flat leather boots.

Coclico boots

Frye riding boot

Hayden-Harnett just sent me an e-mail about these boots, with the ridiculous subject line “Hayden-Harnett’s Leather Booty Call of Love.”

Hayden Harnett riding boot

Somehow, Naomi ended up talking to “Tyler.” What did they talk about? “I don’t remember.” Whatever it was, it must have held her interest, because they decided to go back to his place. He was house-sitting for a friend who also lived on the lower East Side, so that’s where they went.

Was Tyler hot? She was “so wasted, it wasn’t gonna matter.” Also, “coke was probably involved.” Thus, the tragic irony of hedonism: If you are too avid in your pursuit of pleasure, you end up unable to enjoy anything. Always use cocaine responsibly. At his house, “we totally had sex,” but “I remember nothing.” Presumably they went to sleep. “When I woke up,” continues Naomi, “there was blood all over the sheets.”

She was furious when she discovered this: “Did I just get my fuckin’ friend?” We all know that the monthly cycle is a miracle of nature, and puts a womyn’s body in tune with the phases of the moon, but Naomi didn’t care about any of that. She wanted no part of nature and its cycles; she was embarrassed, and worried that “he thinks I’m crazy” for bleeding all over his friend’s bed. They had the following conversation:

“Did you get your period?”

“Oh, fuck it.”

She investigated the matter, but found nothing. (Fun fact for men: The way you check whether you’re having your period is, you stick a finger up your vagina. You can’t learn that from fuckin’ Salon.com, can you??) Naomi went to the bathroom and discovered the source of the blood. When she was up on the roof, she must fallen and skinned her knees without noticing it. When they got in that night, “my knees were gushing blood.” They were fucking doggy-style, and that’s how it got all over the sheets. “I didn’t realize it because I was fucking wasted.”

Obviously, Naomi has forgotten almost everything about this incident, but it ended up being memorable in one way: “I still have the scars.”

I always want to keep this website topical, so you’re a reader in a pro-Obama country (United States, Kenya, Indonesia, etc.) and you get laid on election night, tell me about it. I know personally, for a fact, that people were having victory sex that night. (I know this because I read it on the internet.)

“Rachel” is a university student living in Brisbane, Australia. She describes her motive in writing in to me thus: “I recently had a bit of a roller-coaster ride of a non-relationship with this guy, am currently at the stage of hating every fibre of his being, and have decided that to write it down would be therapeutic.” Actually, I think that’s what happened with most of the sad bastards who write in to me.

Rachel’s story begins when “I met this guy… I’ll just say that he has one of those dreamy names that’s always given to sexy fictional characters and that tends to make girls swoon.” I will call him Glenn. “I met him because we worked at the same restaurant for a few months. I was on pretty good terms with lots of the other people there, but didn’t know him too well – until a party at one of the other peoples’ houses.” Rachel had found at that Glenn was leaving the job soon, and she went to the co-worker party because “I kind of liked him.”

“I was at work that evening, and some people there convinced me to quickly go home, change and meet them to share a taxi once our shift was done. The problem: WHAT TO WEAR? You see, it was a costume party! After a bit of brainstorming, it turned out one of the boys in the kitchen had a sailor hat he could lend me.”

Sailor's cap

“Upon getting home, I changed into a CUTE little dress – bold blue and white stripes, halter neck, kinda flared skirt ending just above the knee. Combined with a denim jacket, flat gold sandals and (of course) the hat, I made a kick-arse sailor. So I met up with my friends and made it to the house party on the other side of the city by 11 p.m.”

Blue and white striped dress

Wrangler denim jacket

Gold sandals

Many of the other guests weren’t even in costume, and she easily outclassed them. “I spent most of my time at the party talking to/flirting with Glenn (and drinking), and by my fourth drink was sitting on his lap (of course). When he whispered all deep-voiced in my ear ‘meet me outside in 30 seconds,’ I sure knew what was coming. Glenn and I went for a ‘walk’ and ended up making out in the park across the road from the party. Can I just mention that it was the middle of winter and I was wearing a short dress, so despite the jacket I was FREEZING. It detracted from the fun somewhat.”

“After at a guess an hour of that, I saw a cab pull up outside the house and knew it was the one meant to be taking me alllll the way back home with the other people who live near me. Glenn was trying to get me to go back to his place, which was just around the corner and apparently had plenty of blankets to warm me up.” I would probably accept an offer like this — it’s cold in my house right now — but she declined. “He also used the somewhat flawed ‘what if I never see you again’ argument. Dude, I know you’re leaving the job, but we live in the same city and I have an email address and a phone.”

On the way home, Rachel sat “in dazed silence mulling over the events of the evening.” She ended up sleeping on a friend’s floor, and since her dress “made shitty winter pyjamas, I just about froze to death.” Probably, this was God’s punishment on her for turning down free sex and blankets. If that’s the case, there was more persecution to come. Rachel waited for her hot guy to contact her, but days and then weeks passed, and he didn’t call. He did, however, waste her time with some lukewarm Facebook messaging.

After a few weeks of this, she concluded he wasn’t really interested, she concluded that he wasn’t really interested, so “when I was asked out by another friend (also a friend of Glenn’s) I didn’t see any reason to say no. This resulted in Glenn getting really angry/stroppy at me and his friend, because apparently despite not showing further interest in me and telling his friend that nothing was happening, he was *actually* just waiting for an opportunity or something.” What a dork. He was “sending me long angsty messages about how he had thought I was out of his league and wanted me to give him another shot (causing me much stress and guilt and tears).” She felt bad, and so she “decided I had made a terrible mistake and that I really liked Glenn. I decided the best option was to stay friends with the other guy rather than date him.”

When she saw Glenn next, she was out drinking with friends, “wearing a satin, cream-coloured dress with a colourful flower pattern around the hem and a gold belt around my waist, over black opaque tights, with black lace-up ankle boots.”

She was “extremely drunk (and thus emotional). We had a talk, which I can remember little of as I have rarely been as drunk as I was that night. The talking led to reconciliation making out, at which point I decided it would be a good idea to hop in a cab and go home with him.” “*Facepalm*”, she adds, in an eloquent display of self-reproach, she adds. But how could she have known? “I kind of expected that after the whole fuss he kicked up when the other guy asked me out, he would actually… want to be involved with me himself.”

Instead, they returned to their pattern of pointless Facebook contact. “When I was particularly friendly or showed interest, he would tend to be fairly dismissive and make me feel like an idiot. For a few weeks a pattern continued of seeing him with mutual friends when drinking and making out, but that fizzled out too.”

How are we to describe a dude like this? Rachel writes that “maybe asshole is being a little harsh – but I was pretty mad that he was such a drama queen… only to get what he wanted and then be interested in nothing more than the occasional hook-up.” Hmmm. “Asshole” may be the mot juste. Glenn, however, is the one who actually has cause for regret. Rachel points out that her outfits at the time were “fantastically cute. And that’s what matters.”